Chapter 5: The House Three Streets Away
We went the next morning.
Leo was up before I was.
I found him in the kitchen at seven, already dressed, making toast he wasn't eating.
"You don't have to come," I said.
He gave me a look that ended the conversation.
We walked.
It felt important not to drive.
The morning was cool, the kind of pale grey that comes before the sun decides what it wants to do, and we walked the same route we had walked a hundred times without knowing what was at the end of it.
The house was a small terraced place with a blue front door and a window box that had lavender in it, slightly overgrown.
There was a light on inside even at this hour.
I stopped at the gate.
Leo stopped beside me.
"Dad," he said.
"I know."
"Whatever she looks like.
Whatever she says first.
Just — stay."
"I'm staying."
I opened the gate.
I knocked.
There was a long pause.
Then the sound of movement inside, slow and careful, and the door opened.
She was smaller than I remembered.
Her hair had gone mostly silver, cut short in a way I didn't recognize.
She was wearing a blue cardigan over a white nightgown and she had clearly not expected anyone at this hour because her face, when she saw me, went through four separate expressions in under two seconds.
Recognition.
Disbelief.
Fear.
And then something that collapsed all three of them.
"Arthur," she said.
Just my name.
Nothing else.
"Hello, Goldi."
Her eyes moved to Leo.
She made a sound I had never heard from her before — not a word, not a cry, something in between, something that had been waiting a very long time to exist.
"Leo," she whispered.
"Hi, Mum." His voice was steady.
"Can we come in?"
Her hand went to her mouth.
She stepped back from the door without speaking and we walked into a small hallway that smelled of lavender and old books and something faintly medicinal underneath.
The front room was tidy in the way of someone who had learned to keep things ordered because disorder cost too much.
A single armchair.
A small sofa.
Photographs on the mantelpiece — and I stopped when I saw them.
Leo's school photo.
Every year.
Framed.
In a row.
I turned to look at her.
"Mrs.
Johnson," she said simply.
"She sent them every year.
I asked her not to.
She sent them anyway."
"Good," Leo said.
Goldi looked at him for a long moment.
She was trembling slightly — her hands, her shoulders, something deep and involuntary.
"You're so tall," she said.
"Dad's fault," Leo said.
"He kept feeding me."
A sound came out of her that might have been a laugh.
It broke in the middle.
She sat down in the armchair because she needed to.
Leo sat on the sofa.
I sat beside him.
"You read the letter," she said to me.
It wasn't a question.
"Last night."
"I didn't — I wrote it for Leo.
I didn't know he'd—" She stopped.
"Are you angry?"
I thought about the eighteen years.
The truck I sold.
The Mother's Day card in the drawer.
The nights I lay awake certain I was failing, certain I was alone, certain she had simply stopped.
"I was," I said.
"For a long time."
"You had every right."
"You should have told me."
"I know." She looked at her hands.
"I know that now.
I didn't — I was so certain you'd stay.
That you'd give up everything to take care of me and I couldn't — Arthur, I couldn't watch you do that.
I couldn't watch Leo grow up with a father who had nothing left."
"You didn't give me the choice."
"No," she said.
"I didn't."
The room was quiet.
Leo leaned forward.
"Mum.
I need to ask you something."
She looked at him.
"Do you regret it?"
She held his gaze for a long time.
Long enough that I thought she might not answer.
"Every day," she said.
"And not at all.
Both things at once.
I regret what it cost you.
I don't regret what it gave you." She looked at me.
"What it gave you both."
Outside, the sun had made its decision.
A thin pale light came through the net curtain and settled across the carpet between us.
May you like
Nobody moved to fill the silence.
It didn't need filling.
